


Remaking memories

by Zangofel



Series: Damn Stubborn Dreamer [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Bull pretends he's blind, F/M, Fluff and Angst, bad memories, cheesy water scenes, cole asks lots of questions, woods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-03-31 23:21:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3997054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zangofel/pseuds/Zangofel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas, Tamsin, Bull and Cole go on an errand in the Hinterlands, and some of Tamsin's old memories make an unwelcome appearance. Cole's insight is not appreciated. Solas has better ways of dispelling old ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is separated into multiple chapters for ease of reading, but feel free to view the entire work. It's a cohesive piece.

“Deep in the stomach, hollow and wanting. Nights long ago, cold inside and out, before we found what hid under the soil…”

Tamsin heard, rather than saw, her companions turn to look at Cole.

“Huh,” Iron Bull said, “that’s a new one. Not me. That you, Solas?”

“No. Inquisitor?”

“Yeah.” She kept moving, climbing over a boulder instead of moving around it. Her shem boots were tucked in her pack, so she could curl her toes into the rock and pop up to survey the land around them. Solas followed suit, his own foot wraps affording him the same mobility, while Iron Bull grumbled about show-off elves and tromped around the boulder.

“Long dark nights, cold, dark ground, hips hurt, bones hurt, stars are upside down and dark dark dark.”

Tamsin could feel the confusion behind her as she dropped off the other side of the boulder, jumped over a fallen log and walked on. A tall stalk of embrium rose out of the grass on her right; she brushed her hand across the flower, watched as the petals and stamen puffed into the air, dancing in the sunlight.

She could feel the air over her shoulder cooling as Solas dropped a few steps back. She was always aware of his presence at every moment—his warmth, the weight of his voice in her ear, the promise of a hand resting on her shoulder—and so she knew when he fell back a few steps, walking closer to Bull and Cole than to her.

“Looks like hide stretched over the hunter’s rack. Is this how she died? Everything hurts, didn’t know how much softness muscles could be and now they’re gone and it’s all—“

“Cole, I think that is enough,” Solas said quietly.

“I’m just trying to help…” The spirit’s voice was soft, bewildered. He was always so surprised when someone told him to stop.

“I know. But now may not be the best time.”

“Okay.”

They continued on in silence, and Tamsin eventually realized that her shoulders were more relaxed than they had been.

“I can feel them.”

At the sound of Cole’s voice, she tensed again. Solas, who had come up beside her, exhaled by her shoulder. It was a small sound, but it made her aware of the sharp, anxious lines in her shoulders and back, and she sighed in response, willing the tension to bleed out of her.

“They’re happy.”

“Who’re happy?” Iron Bull asked.

“The flowers.”

“Flowers have feelings?” Tamsin turned around and started walking backwards so she could look at Cole. He blinked at her, thrown off by the surprise in her voice.

“They like the sun,” he said, a little defensively. “The sun sings to them, they remember the movement in their stems, the bits and parts of them that the wind wants to carry. More to make, now, more to bloom so that the world gets brighter.”

“Flowers have feelings,” Bull observed, and Tamsin smiled, slowed her steps until the party was all walking together.

“Thank you, Cole,” she said, slinging an arm over his shoulders. Cole stared at her, totally befuddled.

“But I didn’t…”

“Sometimes a sad is best treated with a different happiness,” she said. Cole considered this.

“I don’t understand,” he said finally.

Tamsin smiled and squeezed him round the shoulders once, then bounded away, toes and fingertips carrying her up the side of a massive rock formation ahead of them.

“Any luck?” Bull called from below. Tamsin fished the map Harding had given them out of her pack.

“We’re going in the right direction,” she said. “Looks like the logging stand should be another half-day’s walk from here.”

“And the quarry?”

She looked at the map in her hands, then turned and looked west, shading her eyes against the afternoon sun. “Another day in a different direction, but it’s all territory we know. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“The flowers like it when you touch them,” Cole murmured as Tamsin slid down the side of the boulder. She broke a nail on a divot in the stone and hissed, sticking her finger in her mouth as soon as she reached the ground, but Cole, usually so attentive, was distracted. He slipped around the side of the rock formation. The party followed, and found him crouching next to a single embrium. He reached out and tapped the stem; the flower shivered, pollen jumping into the air. After a moment, Cole tapped the stem again, harder, and the whole flower puffed into a cloud of petals and pollen, sending all four of them into a sneezing fit. Cole kept sneezing after the others’ noses had cleared—and then Tamsin realized that he wasn’t sneezing anymore, he was giggling, a strange high sound with a lot of breath behind it.

“What’s making you laugh, Cole?” she asked.

Cole looked up at them, tilting back his head so they could see his face under the brim of that ridiculous hat. “Spring,” he said, with the strangest smile on his face. “So much life, under the surface, waiting waiting for water and sunlight, and everything will be alive.”

“Spring is like that,” Tamsin agreed, offering the spirit her hand. Her general course of action was to treat him like a very strange human, which seemed to work for the most part, though he reacted oddly to her physical gestures. Now, Cole ignored her hand, rising to his feet on his own and wandering off down the path ahead of them. Bull, Solas and Tamsin glanced at each other, then followed. He was going in the right direction, at any rate.

They found the quarry by late afternoon and made camp that evening, just as the sun dipped to the horizon. Because the Hinterlands was pretty much Inquisition territory, they’d brought only emergency rations, and so Bull dragged Cole off to find some rabbit or baby ram for dinner. Cole didn’t like hunting, but he understood why it was important, and made less of a fuss if he was the one to do the deed. He was dead silent with a bow too, which was nice. Bull really just went along to keep him from getting distracted.

Tamsin helped Solas collect fallen wood and build a fire pit. Normally, she would have been so aware of him that her whole body vibrated, but all she could think about was the memories Cole had dragged up. She hadn’t realized she’d been thinking of them until he’d said something, but she’d been getting hungry at the time, and the slant of tree shadows over wells in the uneven terrain had given her a strong sense of deja vu.

Tamsin dropped her pack by her bedroll—they hadn’t bothered setting up tents, as the sky was clear and the air warm—then pulled her belt knife, the one she used for boring things like shaving kindling and opening letters, from its sheath. She looked around their campsite for a moment, examining the ground, then turned and headed off into the trees.

“Vhenan?” Solas asked.

“I’m getting something extra to eat. You’re welcome to come along, ma’arlath.”

Fabric and grass rustled, and then his shadow fell over Tamsin’s shoulder, leading her from behind as she moved on. 

They walked up over the edge of a small hill, and Tamsin spotted what she’d been looking for: a cluster of royal elfroot in the shadow of a boulder, scattered around with some innocuous-looking green leafy things. Solas followed her, quietly curious, as Tamsin made her way over to the spot of vegetation and knelt in the dirt. She drove her dagger into the ground beside one of the green tufts, then shimmied it in a circle, and pulled on the leaves. Out popped a thick root about the length of her palm.

“Do you know these?” she asked, handing it to Solas.

“I know the leaves, but not the root,” he admitted, brushing the dirt away to reveal the tuber’s lavender flesh. “What a strange color.”

“Yeah. Surprisingly good.” Tamsin dug out a few more. When they’d accumulated a small pile of about six, she and Solas gathered them up, and Tamsin led them to the small stream near where they’d made camp.

They didn’t say much as they knelt at the stream’s edge and washed the roots in the cool water. Silence didn’t bother Solas, which was something Tamsin liked about him very much. He was content to talk, and content to sit in quiet coexistence. It wasn’t a quality she had ever experienced in a lover before.

_Lover,_ she thought, realizing that the word had popped into her mind instinctively, and blushed all the way to the tips of her ears.

"Da’mi?”

Tamsin looked up to see Solas looking at her oddly. There was a tiny smirk of nonplussed amusement at the corners of his lips, and the sight made her blush deepen until her ears were burning.

“Nothing,” she muttered. biting her lip and staring down at the root in her hands. She scrubbed at it with her fingertips, ignoring the fact that it was most definitely clean as she willed her blush to go away.

Movement at the edge of her vision; Tamsin looked up, and more or less ran into Solas’s lips. She gasped in surprise, a tiny little squeak of a sound that made Solas smile into the kiss. Then he brought his hands up to curve around her jaw and the back of her head, and the cold from the stream felt wonderful against her skin, soothing away the heat of her flush. His mouth, on the other hand, was wonderfully warm and sweet as he swept his tongue against her bottom lip—not insistent or demanding, just tender—and then something cold trickled down the back of her shirt, and Tamsin giggled into the kiss, completely destroying the moment.  
Solas pulled back, one eyebrow raised. “I didn’t know my kisses were so amusing, vhenan,” he said drily.

“No, it’s not that.” Tamsin reached to the back of her neck and rubbed at the cold. Her fingertips came away wet; water had dripped from his hands down her spine. “It tickled,” she explained, showing him the stream water on her fingertips.

“Ah.” Solas smiled that soft half-smile of his and kissed her again, just once, and then they turned back to the stream and finished washing their half of dinner.

Cole and Bull brought back a trio of rabbits for dinner; one and a half for Bull, and the other rabbit and a half for the two elves and the spirit who, despite being some strange half-degree of corporeal, did like to eat. He cried when they skinned and gutted the rabbits, which they were used to. He didn’t have a problem helping; he often murmured comforting words to himself as he stripped the animal down, and the tears that ran down his face were silent. Afterwards, while Bull turned the rabbits and vegetables on a makeshift spit and Tamsin went off to bury the entrails, Solas spoke quietly to Cole about the spirits of forest creatures he had seen in the Fade. When Tamsin returned, Cole’s cheeks were dry, and he and Solas were deep in discussion about something entirely unrelated to rabbits. Tamsin brushed her fingertips across Solas’s shoulder as she passed him, and he glanced up, giving her a small smile. Cole broke off his sentence, staring at the two, and then said, “His giving comfort to another person makes you happier than him giving comfort to you. Why?”

“Hmm?” Tamsin glanced up from her pack. She’d only been half-listening. Cole repeated the question and she sat back on her heels. “That’s a good question.”

“You don’t want comfort from him. Why?”

“One question at a time, Cole.” He closed his mouth, mashing his lips together in an approximation of the tight face Cassandra made when she was biting her tongue, and Tamsin smiled at him. “It’s easy to be kind to a— your Inquisitor.” Behind her, Bull snorted at the aborted sentence, and Tamsin resisted the urge to flip him a rude gesture. She preferred to maintain a semblance of secrecy, at least for now. “When he’s kind to you, or anyone else, I know it’s because he means it, not because he feels that you owe him something.”

“Do you think he owes you kindness?” Cole asked, frowning.

“No, not at all. It’s just… it’s different.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Me either,” she admitted, “But sometimes that’s how it works.”

Cole frowned at the grass between his feet, considering this, and Tamsin went to check on their dinner. As she neared the fire, Iron Bull looked up at her, a dry expression on his face.

“‘Your Inquisitor’?” he asked.

“It doesn’t mean as much when it’s to a superior, instead of an equal. More obligation.” That wasn’t what he was asking, and they both knew it, but Tamsin refused to rise to the bait and Bull let it be.


	2. Chapter 2

The sun set while they ate, turning the grass and trees of their campsite a deep, burnished gold and making the lavender tubers look deep red instead. “The color changed, but they didn’t,” Cole muttered, turning his in the hand, watching the colors change as the vegetable went from shade to light to shade.

“Yes, but it will change if you don’t eat it, and they’re better warm,” Tamsin informed him. Cole blinked at her, then took a bite—out of the side of it, to everyone’s amusement, instead of biting off the end—and his eyes grew wide.

“It tastes like spring nights deep underground,” he said.

“That’s a new one,” Tamsin mused, looking at the slice of purple root speared on the end of her knife. “I think they taste like sweet carrots.”

“… that too,” Cole agreed after a long pause, and seemed entirely befuddled when the others laughed.

“They are good, though, Boss,” Bull said a little while later. “I’ve never seen them before. What are they called?”

Tamsin shrugged, her mouth full. “Don’t know,” she said after she had swallowed. “I found them several years ago, and now I just know where to find them and how to eat them. Never named them, though.”

“How’d you find them? Not often people go looking for new sources of food in woods like these,” the mercenary mused.

“Trial and error,” Tamsin replied. “If you eat too many raw ones, they’ll make you sick.”

“Good to know.” Bull made a face.

After they finished dinner, Bull gathered up the bones and uneaten bits of rabbit to dispose of it elsewhere, so they didn’t wake up to bears in their campsite, and then said something about tracking down the pool at the end of the nearby stream for a bath. Tamsin pulled out her whetstone and set to sharpening her daggers, bracing the hilt between her knees, wetting the small, smooth stone with her waterskin and pulling it slowly down the blade’s edge. There was a special kind of peace in this. The soft scrape of the stone against the metal had a curious sort of whisper to it, and she was still learning the sing of the whetstone against the lazurite and veridium blades she’d made herself a few weeks ago. The lazurite reminded her of well-tempered steel—smooth, easy to please if you knew how to work it—but the veridium played with her. It liked to slip against the whetstone, to give in the wrong places and ring too loudly at the end of a stroke. But Tamsin was patient; she had spent her entire life learning to care for blades made of all kinds of metals, and this was no different. It would just take longer.

Cole moved in the corner of her eye, settling down on the grass beside her. Tamsin paused to pour more water over the stone and watched as the spirit stirred the fire, feeding it with a new log. “You love your blades,” he said.

“Yes,” Tamsin said simply. It was true. “Don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Cole replied. “They don’t like being made to do things that I don’t want to do. The arrows are easier. The wood likes to fly. But the arrowheads fuss, and they want to be sharper than they are, but it’s not the same as with a blade. I don’t know how.”

“What are your arrowheads made of?” Tamsin asked, turning back to the veridium in her lap. It winked deep green in the firelight, and she ran a finger along its side, feeling the smoothness of the metal.

“Obsidian and iron.”

“They’re two very different edges. They would give you trouble. Bring one of each to me, I’ll show you how to work them, if you want.”

“Okay.” Cole stood and glided away. Tamsin hummed the drift of a Dalish hunting song under her breath as she stroked the stone down the edge of her blade.

Sometimes it helped to distract herself a little. Another pass, another line— _wise as the halla, swift as the wolf, let the earth take and it will give both_ —and another. On the next, something changed; the metal seemed to sigh, shift under the stone, and at the end of the pass the blade sang. It was a short sound—this was a dagger, not a longsword under stress—but it was clear and bright, and when Tamsin turned the blade for the next stroke of the whetstone, the metal hummed sweetly under her fingers. It had given up its secrets, and now she knew how to coax the finest, strongest edge she could.

“It likes you,” Cole said as he sat beside her. Tamsin nodded, smiling down at the blade. “How do you do that? Get it to sing with you? It doesn’t groan like some blades do.”

“Practice.” Tamsin set the whetstone in the grass and lifted the dagger, turning it and watching the play of the firelight along the edge. She slid the back of her thumbnail across the blade, then pulled her hand back and examined her nail. There, hard to see in the flickering firelight, was a hair-thin line.

“You let it cut you?”

“I let it show me how it can cut. There’s a difference.” Tamsin wiped the edge with a cloth and slid the blade back into its sheath. “Let me see your arrowheads.” Cole handed them over, the iron and obsidian winking grey and black in the firelight. “Do you separate them?”

“No, they like being together.”

“Perhaps, but they don’t do the same thing. Iron needs more love, but it can twist and pull. Obsidian will cut sharper than anything else, but it’s for stabbing and slicing; it’ll break if you twist it. Here.” Tamsin leaned toward Cole, iron arrowhead in her hand, and showed him how to pull the edge against the whetstone at an angle. Cole watched, brow furrowed, and seemed uncertain when she held out the stone for him to try.

“The iron will forgive you if you don’t do it right the first time,” Tamsin said gently, half-teasing and half-serious. She couldn’t always tell what would appeal to Cole’s odd concerns. Apparently, though, that had been the right thing to say, because Cole took the stone from her and tried to mimic the movement she’d taught him. Tamsin corrected him gently, turning the stone in his hand, and watched with approval as he did it right.

He sharpened the arrowhead in his hand, and then got up to fetch the rest of his iron arrows. Tamsin straightened and rubbed the back of her neck, easing out a knot of tension, and looked up to see Solas on the other side of the fire, watching her with a curious expression.

“What?”

“Nothing at all, vhenan.” The mage shook his head, but his smile was too full of meaning. Tamsin scowled at him playfully.

“I know that’s not true.”

“I will tell you later if you wish, but it’s nothing important.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Solas’s eyebrows rose. “I’m hurt, my love.”

“Mmhmm.” Tamsin tried to maintain her suspicious face, but it wasn’t working; she could feel a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. Solas met the smile with one of his own, and then looked back to the journal in his lap.

Cole returned, quiver in hand, and settled beside her.

“Do you have another sharp stone?” he asked, looking very concerned. “I don’t want to keep your other dagger from singing, too.”

“No, I just have the one, but you can use it. My blade will wait a while longer.”

“Okay.” Cole took the whetstone back when she offered it, and began to sharpen another arrowhead. He moved slowly and methodically, tongue caught between his teeth in concentration. Tamsin leaned back on her arms and watched him. She was okay with Cole’s odd perceptive ways, but she was no mage. She didn’t hear the world talking the way he did, and even her conscious ventures into the Fade were different from the stories Solas told. More self-centered, really. But watching Cole sharpen his arrowheads, and feeling an answering hum in her fingertips with every slide of the whetstone against iron, left a sweet sort of peace in her chest. She wondered, idly, if this was what Solas felt when she asked about the Fade and his experience. Did he feel the same sense of warm pride, the contentment at sharing something important? If so… well, she hoped he did.

Cole held out an arrow for her to expect. Tamsin did the same test she had with her own blade, touching the back of her nail to the sharp edge, and showed him the white line, and how to turn the whetstone so the edge was finer. They could be finer on arrowheads, since arrows only needed to hit hard and cut deep once, and when she told Cole this, he murmured something about the arrowheads wanting that.

“You all look peaceful.” Iron Bull strode into their circle of firelight and sat down with an “oof,” stretching out his legs. His grey skin was still a little damp from his bath, and he leaned toward the fire, obviously trying to dry off.

“Tamsin’s teaching me how to make my arrows sing,” Cole announced. Bull frowned slightly.

“That’s not concerning at all.”

“I’m showing him how to sharpen them properly,” Tamsin explained, and Bull’s face cleared.

“That makes more sense. You know, Boss, if you want a bath, you should really go now before it gets colder. That pool is fed by a stream that got a lot of sun all day, so it’s not bone-chillingly cold.”

“That actually sounds really nice.” Tamsin stood and stretched. Cole looked up at her.

“Do you need your sharpstone?”

“No, you can keep working. Be gentle with them, and listen closely. If the metal squeaks, you’re putting too much pressure on too thin an edge.”

“Okay.” Cole looked back to the work in his lap. Tamsin grabbed a bundle of clean small clothes and a thin blanket from her pack and headed off in the direction Iron Bull indicated.

The sun had set a while ago, so the only light came from Thedas’s two moons and a sky full of stars. Tamsin found the pool quickly—it wasn’t far, and the thin trees made it easy to find—and then just stood and stared upwards for a while. There was Judex, blade pointing towards the horizon, and Fervenial. Tamsin ran a thoughtful finger along the tattoos across her cheeks. She had always had thin, sensitive skin—much to her frustration—and so the tattooed lines had never fully smoothed out. If she concentrated, she could feel the faintest ridges in her skin where the branches spread out. She had always been attached to Mythal, and had known from a very young age that her vallaslin would be the trees of the goddess of protection. Every time she looked to the stars and saw Fervenial, branches reaching to the sky’s apex, she thought of the goddess, and the charge of protection she’d sworn to herself. To protect and serve her people, to pursue justice, and to walk the truest path she could for herself, in order to keep her loved ones safe. Her Keeper had imparted that lesson to her, when she was very young:

 _Da’len,_ she had said, as they sat on a fence looking over the halla, _if you only remember one thing, remember this._

 _I’ll remember everything, hahren,_ she had promised, with the solemnity only possible in the very young and very earnest. Deshanna had laughed softly, but not unkindly.

 _Hush and listen, or you won’t remember anything at all,_ she had chastised. _Now listen._ Tamsin had shut her mouth and listened. _You are eager and loving, and want to protect and care for those around you. This is a good thing, and your quick and silent feet and blade will help you. But remember, da’len, if you do not follow the path you know to be right and true, any love you have for others will be twisted by your own poor sight._

_But how will I know what that path is?_

_Here_ , Deshanna had poked Tamsin’s sternum, earning a yelp and a scowl, and smiled beatifically in return. _You have good instincts, little one. Follow them. Pray for a clear mind and a pure heart in all you do. You know how to let a blade fly, just as you know where to step without being heard. Do you have to think about these things?_

_No. … not usually._

_It is instinct. A gut feeling, perhaps you could say. Don’t lose that._ Tamsin had promised that she wouldn’t, and she had done her best to keep that promise.

Not that it had always been easy. Tamsin looked down from the sky—looking up was starting to make her dizzy—and set her clean smallclothes on the bank, then began to undress. The day had been warm, and they had stumbled into a single fight. Though it had been small and over quickly, there was a little blood on her leggings, and her cotton shirt stuck to her skin under the leather jacket. She hung her clothing over a branch to air out, and stripped down to nothing.

The air raised goosebumps where it hit cold skin, and she shivered as she quickly swished her small clothes in the water and draped them over the same branch to dry. She dropped her blanket—which was her travel version of a towel, a luxury that she refused to deny herself—and the dagger she had brought near the bank, then slipped into the water.

Bull had been right. It was no hot spring, but the water was just warm enough that she didn’t have to clench her jaw as she ducked her entire body under the surface, just to get it over with. The bottom of the pool was rocky, too, blessedly; no pond muck to seep between her toes and ruin whatever clean feeling she was chasing.

Tamsin seated herself on a rock and began to unbraid her hair. The water settled around her, stirring only when her arms moved, and she could see the constellations flicker into reflections around her. Sword, tree, dragon, owl, all with their own history and their own secrets.

She hadn’t always known the stars, of course. She hadn’t cared much for them for a very long time, in fact, but then…

But then she got very very lost and broke her vow before her vallaslin had even healed, and that had changed everything.

Tamsin sighed. These memories were not going to leave her alone. Not here, not with the stars echoing that cold indifference from so many years ago. Not with the dip and swell of shadows over spring grass, not with the roots she’d dug up for their dinner in an effort to bring something new to the memory, not with the sense of deja vu that had been chasing her all day.

Braid undone, Tamsin ducked her entire head under the water and swished back and forth.

She’d been to the Hinterlands many times, she mused as she surfaced. It was Inquisition territory now, and there was nothing strange or uncomfortable about these hills, this grass, these bears and rams and bandits. This was not the Free Marches, not the forest northwest of her clan’s territory, not the unfamiliar hills that she nearly never left. But for some reason, it felt the same. And it would not leave her alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Elvhen translations are at the end of the chapter.

Grass rustled. Tamsin whirled and rose halfway out of the water, grabbing her dagger from where it lay unsheathed on the bank and crouching defensively. A flicker of shadows, the quiet snkt of a thick stem breaking underfoot, and Solas emerged from the trees, a magelight over his shoulder. He saw her immediately, and a faint flicker of alarm crossed over his face, followed quickly by something far more focused, and then another flicker of concern.

“Vhenan?” he asked, approaching the pool. Tamsin closed her eyes, willing her heart to slow. He had badly startled her, and the adrenaline coursing through her body was made worse by the fact that she was naked.

Oh Creators she was naked. Tamsin placed her dagger back on the grass and sunk under the water up to her shoulders, blushing furiously. Solas knelt on the bank and reached out, slipping a hand under her chin.

“Da’mi,” he said, “why are you crying?”

Tamsin raised a hand to her cheek, a protest on her lips, and felt the warmth there. That was not water. Those were tears.

“I… It’s a long story,” she muttered, wiping her cheeks furiously. “Why are you here?”

Solas had the decency to look a little embarrassed. “We have not truly had a moment alone in several days. I saw an opportunity and took it.”

“So you came and ambushed me while I’m bathing?” Tamsin demanded, raising an eyebrow, and was frankly delighted to see a tiny tinge of red touch the tips of Solas’s ears.

“I’m sorry if I misjudged,” he murmured, moving to rise. “I will leave you b—“

“Oh hush.” Tamsin flicked water at him, and her delight only increased at the befuddled look on his face. “You didn’t misjudge, Solas. I’m just surprised.” 

“Ah.” He settled back into his crouch. “I would have asked, or given you notice, but I know your preference for discretion and I am sure Iron Bull would have noticed. He has been watching you like a hawk all day.”

“He has?” Tamsin asked, surprised.

“Yes.” Solas frowned slightly. “Have you not noticed?”

“No,” she admitted, a little ashamed. “I’ve been… distracted.” That sentence had so much potential for a great deal of suggestive meaning, but Solas, blessedly, was not one to find meaning where it didn’t exist.

“Are you alright?” he asked softly, reaching out and touching her cheek where her tears had dried. Tamsin leaned her head into his hand, sighing softly.

“No,” she whispered, and a knot in her chest loosened with the truth of it.

“I see.” Solas rubbed his thumb over her cheek for a moment. “May I join you?”

“Sure,” she replied, managing not to stutter, though she had a feeling her blush was returning. Damn her pale skin. Solas rose to his feet and set down his staff, then pulled off his armored coat and folded it on the ground. Tamsin, face warm now, turned away.

It wasn’t like she was some blushing virgin. Well, not the virgin part. She blushed at the drop of a vaguely romantic hat, which drove her mad. As for Solas, she had already begun mapping every part of his body with various parts of her own, and was getting used to the idea of him returning the favor, but watching while he undressed was just too far out of her comfort zone, especially for this night—and when she remembered what had been bothering her, the memories came flooding back, and she sighed.

The water rippled against her back as Solas slipped in. After a moment, his arms reached around her, hands settling against her abdomen and pulling her to him. At the press of his warm chest against her back, Tamsin sighed again, but it was a very different sigh, a happy sigh, full of relief that he was here.

Solas chuckled, his chest vibrating, and dropped a kiss onto her shoulder. Tamsin leaned back into him, utterly unconcerned about her wet hair or anything else.

“What is on your mind?” he asked softly, dropping another kiss higher on her shoulder, and then one on the nape of her neck. Tamsin shivered deliciously.

“Old memories,” she said softly, tilting her head to invite more kisses. Solas’s lips curved against her skin as he obliged.

“Is this related to Cole’s strange observations from earlier?”

“Yes,” Tamsin admitted, voice even softer. The movement of Solas’s lips across her shoulder paused.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

“I don’t think it would help,” she murmured. Solas hummed in agreement, and the warmth of his lips returned to her skin.

“Sometimes talking does not help,” he murmured. “But, ‘ma’lath, you are seeing old ghosts tonight.”

Tamsin shivered with the truth of it. Solas had a habit of being very right at the most irritatingly vulnerable times.

“Someone I loved died in woods like these,” she said softly. Behind her, Solas inhaled and leaned forward, the warmth of him flush against her back. Tamsin rested her head back on his shoulder.

“I always knew I wanted to be one of the protectors of my people,” she said after a very long pause. Her voice was soft, and she avoided Solas’s gaze. “Always. My only sister is much older than me, and she has two little ones, twins: a girl and a boy. I was eleven when they were born, and they took to me like ducks to water. I started training with the hunters when I… well, I’d been copying them since I could walk, but I really started training with them when I was thirteen. I’d be trying to walk through the forest without making a sound—tracking a rabbit or a squirrel or something—and one or the other, or both of them, would come barreling through, shrieking ‘Ta’mi!’ and any training I wanted to do would be impossible. It frustrated me to no end, but I loved them so.”

“‘Ta’mi’?” Solas asked. “Sky blade?”

“Tall blade.” Tamsin made a face at him. “Everyone is tall when you are two.”

Solas chuckled.

“Because I’d always known what my role was to be, and because I was good at it, I received the vallaslin when I was sixteen.”

“So young,” Solas said, and there was a weight to his voice that Tamsin couldn’t read.

“I know,” she murmured, “But I had always known. I would always be a hunter and a protector for my clan. I would always take Mythal’s vallaslin. It was just right. I spent that night going over all the prayers I had ever known. I would serve, I would protect, I would feed, I would guard, I would champion. Everything for my people and my sister’s little ones.

“A week after the ceremony, we moved. The halla needed new grazing grounds, and we wanted to move northwest. My sister loved to sing, and she’d started writing songs. She’d wander into the woods with the halla while they grazed, and come back humming some tune no one had ever heard before.

“And then one day she didn’t come back.”

Solas inhaled, a soft noise of pained surprise. Tamsin avoided his gaze, looking instead out across the water’s surface.

“We went looking, of course. A few cynics thought she’d run away, but I knew, and our Keeper knew, that she would never leave her children. We all searched. I cried a lot during those two days, more out of worry than anything else… and I knew that I couldn’t let myself cry in front of the little ones. The night she disappeared, and the night after that, they slept with me in my bed. They cried enough for all three of us, so when I woke up the next day, I was determined to find her, or her body, just to have answers.

“So I grabbed my blades and went looking, following the hallas’ tracks into the forest. The ground dipped there like it does here, but the edges were steeper, and there was less light so it was harder to see where they stopped and started, and what was a dip in the ground and what was a small cliff. I tripped over one, and fell so much farther than I should have been able to. I knew, I think, then, that that was what had happened. She hadn’t been looking, she had tripped, and fallen. Maybe she’d hit her head, or her back. Maybe it was quick. I hoped it was quick. It probably wasn’t.

“My fall dropped me down on top of a boulder. I broke my right leg and sprained my left ankle.”

A sharp noise from Solas. Tamsin didn’t dare look up. She’d started this story. She couldn’t stop now.

“I fell down next to the boulder, into a patch of royal elfroot, and couldn’t walk. I stayed there for a long time. I don’t know how long. Days, maybe a week. I think I passed out from the pain a couple of times. That’s how I found out about those roots, though; I had my waterskin, and elfroot stalks have a lot of moisture in them, but I didn’t have any food, so I dug around where I could reach when I got desperate enough, and realized that I could eat them. I found out, too, that chewing elfroot leaves works well enough, compared to smoking them. That helped with the pain, some, but it’s also why I don’t remember how long I was there.

“I remember dreaming about my sister. I suppose that’s what Cole picked up on, since these woods look so similar. I kept having nightmares that she hadn’t died immediately, that she’d hit her side or broken her legs and couldn’t walk, either, but was alive and couldn’t do anything about it. I don’t know what happened. We didn’t find her body.

“They found me, though.” Here Tamsin stopped, lifted her wet hands out of the water and rubbed her face until she couldn’t tell what was stream water and what was tears. “They found me and brought me back, and I healed. The kids cried, and eventually another mother in the tribe took them under her wing. I couldn’t do it, even though I swore to protect them. I just couldn’t do it. The tribe sang for my sister, and moved on. The halla came with us. I stayed a hunter, kept trying to protect the people I loved even though I wasn’t very good at it, and then the Keeper sent me to the conclave, and you know the rest.”

Tamsin shrugged. It was not a nonchalant story, but nonchalance was all she had here, so she pretended that the memories didn’t open a wound in her so deep that Cole probably wouldn’t have ever shut up about it if someone hadn’t said something. “So those are my ghosts, vhenan.” She turned her head and placed a kiss on his jaw.

Solas bowed his head, resting his forehead on her shoulder for a time. Tamsin waited. She would have been worried by his silence if she wasn’t so drained by bringing up those memories.

“ _Ir abelas,_ ” he whispered finally. “ _Irel abelas_.”

“It’s an old wound,” Tamsin murmured, trying to convince herself as much as him.

“If this is what has been going through your mind all day, I… you are very strong.”

Tamsin was tempted to shrug again. Accepting the compliment was too hard. Instead, she leaned forward, cupping her hands and splashing water onto her face. Solas ran his hand down the center of her back, fingertips grazing along her spine in that way that gave her goosebumps. She shivered, but it was a good shiver, and when he repeated the motion a wave of relaxation washed over her. She sighed despite herself.

“Here,” he murmured, hands moving to her shoulders and pushing gently. Tamsin let him turn her around and guide her to the edge of the water where she, at his coaxing, leaned on the still-warm grass of the bank and pillowed her head on her arms. “Don’t move,” Solas said.

“Why?” Tamsin lifted her head, and Solas tapped her back firmly with one finger.

“I said don’t move, ‘ma’lath.” Tamsin scowled at him, but his face was gentle and utterly unreadable, so she lay her head back down.

Solas placed his hands on her back, heat radiating so sweetly from his skin that Tamsin wondered if he was using a spell, and dug his thumbs into the knot between her shoulder blades.

Tamsin yelped. She hadn’t even known that knot was there. “Breathe,” he murmured, voice deep and low in her ear, and she obeyed instinctively at the rumble of his command. The pain lessened, just slightly, and as Solas continued to work, the knot slowly eased and took the pain with it.

Solas moved then, to another knot between her shoulder and her neck, and then another by her spine. Tamsin wondered once or twice how he had learned to massage so well—was there a spirit in the Fade that taught him?—but asking wasn’t worth the effort of forcing herself out of the delicious pile of goo he had turned her into.

Knots gone, Solas’s hands eased. He traced gentle, aimless patterns on her back for a time, fingertips grazing lightly over her skin, and then moved his hands to her hair.

Tamsin drew in a breath when his fingers touched her scalp. She couldn’t help it; that was her favorite, in more ways than one. Solas smiled—she could hear it in his breathing, though she couldn’t see him—and finished undoing the braid she had forgotten about when he surprised her. Hair unbound, he began to finger comb her silver-white locks, hands strangely gentle and sure for a man with no hair of his own.

“Thank you,” she mumbled into the grass. Solas hummed quietly and dropped a kiss on her shoulder, then continued with her hair, working his way up from the ends. Tamsin could feel strands drop from his fingers as he released them, drifting about her face and sliding across her skin.

The sun had been down for some time, but the heat of the bright spring day still lingered in the grass and the water. Tamsin turned her head, gazing at the stars. Their light seemed warm, now, as if they smiled down at her. The stars had a lot of moods, she thought idly; so many of her strongest memories, for better or for worse, had been made at night, and there was often a sharp impression of the stars tucked away in that memory, shining warmly or coldly, familiar or distant, comforting or frightening. An odd thing, perhaps, to see so much in them.. but they were always there.

Solas’s thumbs nestled into the curve at the base of her skull and pressed upwards. A bolt of heat shot through Tamsin and her breath caught in her throat. Behind her, Solas chuckled, a low, rumbling sound that sent another jolt through her. This one went straight to her core and simmered there.

“Solas…” she mumbled into her arm, not sure what she wanted. It wasn’t a plea for him to continue, or warning for him to stop… if anything, she was checking with him, seeing if he knew what he was doing.

“Yes, _‘ma’av’in_?” he asked, breath warm on her skin. Oh, he knew what he was doing. Tamsin turned her face towards the ground, hoping her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt as Solas rubbed her scalp.

It wasn’t that she found head rubs arousing. On the contrary, a well-placed scratch could instantly bleed any and all tension out of her. Tugging on her hair, though, was another thing entirely, and one that Solas definitely knew about. And, as relaxed as she was, part of her was still very aware of the fact that she and Solas were covered by nothing but water, and their companions were a considerable distance away.

Solas stopped rubbing her head, and Tamsin felt a strange mix of relief and disappointment. Instead, he smoothed her hair back from her face, fingertips combing through as he gathered it all and draped it over her shoulder. He repeated the motion, catching the short, wispy pieces that had escaped him the first time, gathering her hair into his hands, and then gently pulled.

Tamsin gasped. She couldn’t help it. “Solas,” she whispered, and his name was loaded with meaning: _What are you doing? Where are you going with this? Please do that again._

“‘ _Ma’av’in_ ,” Solas murmured, “I would banish your ghosts.”

“Is that what that was?” she asked, faintly embarrassed by the breathiness of her voice. “I thought you were just being nice.”

“I am very nice.” As if to prove it, Solas smoothed one of his hands down her spine, though the other still held her hair. “I am also very… aware.” His free hand slid around her middle, fingertips ghosting over the underside of her breast. Tamsin inhaled.

“There are no ghosts here.”

“Good.” Solas tightened his arm around her, hand finding a palmful of breast as he pulled her flush against him again. It was very different this time; Tamsin could feel his arousal between them, and when she wiggled her hips under the very weak guise of shifting her weight, he inhaled sharply and tugged on her hair. She dropped her head back onto his shoulder willingly, and was rewarded with a heavy, hot kiss below her ear.

“Are you playing with me, da’mi?” he rumbled.

“I would never,” Tamsin purred, not bothering to hide the grin on her face. Solas saw it; he nipped very gently at her neck, earning a gasp from Tamsin. “Are _you_ playing with me?” she asked, when her breath had unstuck from her throat. Solas laughed again, low and soft.

“Always.”

He let go of her hair and brought his hand around to the front of her neck, palm resting on her throat, fingers pressing against the sensitive skin just under her jaw. Tamsin instinctively pressed herself tighter against his chest, her hips shifting in the process, and Solas inhaled, the hand over her throat tensing ever so slightly. There was no threat in it, but he did press his thumb under her jaw, turn his head and nip lightly at her throat as his other hand slid down her body, tracing a deliberately winding path towards the coiled heat between her legs. He danced around her, tracing lines on the very tops of her thighs, and Tamsin bit her lip, tried not to squirm. She wasn’t successful.

“Stay still, vhenan,” he murmured.

“You don’t make it very easy,” Tamsin grumbled. Solas’s hand, which had been winding ever closer to that ache between her legs, stopped. He flattened his palm across the tops of her legs and pressed down, stilling her. Tamsin closed her eyes, took a breath, and tried to calm her body. She knew this mood of his; he wanted things a particular way, and he would get them. It was never worth it for her to push back. Besides, every time his voice took on that extra level of command, she ended up enjoying herself _immensely_.

“Better,” he said, when she had been still for a few moments, and slid the hand that was resting on her thighs upwards. Tamsin bit down on her bottom lip, pressed her head back against his shoulder, and closed her eyes, but she didn’t squirm. Solas hummed in approval, and the hand on her throat shifted, his thumb rubbing a tender circle under her jaw. “Open your legs,” he whispered. A shiver went all through her—she knew he felt it, as his lips brushed against her cheek when he smiled, and she could feel an answering twitch between them—and she obeyed.

Oh, he was going to tease her. Solas trailed his fingertips along the insides of her thighs, coming close, so close, but never quite there. “Solas,” she groaned. His hand stilled.

“Did I say you could talk?”

“You didn’t say I _couldn’t_.” Her tone was decidedly unimpressed. She liked these games of his, but only when he told her the rules ahead of time. Solas paused, and then laughed.

“True,” he admitted. “But be quiet.”

“Silent-quiet, or not-too-loud-quimmmphh.” Tamsin’s question died as the hand on her throat moved to cover her mouth.

“Not too loud, but I am hardly inviting conversation.” Tamsin giggled quietly against his palm, despite herself, and when Solas pressed his lips against her neck, she could feel him smiling, too.

He pressed a second kiss to her neck, then a third, this one hot and open-mouthed. Tamsin sighed, tilting her head to the side to give him more room. A fourth kiss, with a gentle scrape of his teeth along the skin, and the hand on her legs resumed its wandering, tracing the line of tendon on the inside of her leg, the crease above her thigh, taking its sweet damn time. Oh, it was hard not to squirm. Tamsin turned her head farther, pressing her cheek against his shoulder and squeezing her eyes shut. Solas drew a hot line along the twisted line of her neck with his tongue, earning an inhale and a stifled half-moan, as his hand continued its entirely unsatisfying wanderings. He trailed his fingers up, up—oh maybe—but no, he jumped the space between her thighs, and Tamsin’s next sound was significantly more frustrated. She was so damned tense, she could feel every twitch of her muscles from shoulder to toe.

“Relax,” Solas rumbled, “or you will undo all of the work I put into your back.”

“I’m trying not to _move_ ,” she muttered against his shoulder. Solas’s hand and mouth stilled, to her utter disappointment.

“Relax,” he repeated. Tamsin groaned in protest, taking some small satisfaction in the small shudder that rippled through him. When he didn’t move, she mashed her lips together and inhaled sharply through her nose, then out through her mouth, willing the trembling tension in her body to exit. It took a few more breaths, but eventually she was able to let herself melt into Solas, into the arm around her shoulders and the support of his chest against her back.

“Good,” he murmured, and then stood. Tamsin yelped in protest as he pulled her up with him, air hitting wet skin with a shock of cold. Before she could demand to know what the _hell_ he was doing, Solas spun her around to face him, fisted one hand in her hair, and crashed their lips together.

It was all demand and take, his lips sliding wet and hot against hers. When he ran his tongue along her bottom lip, she opened to him, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held on as he tilted her head back and kissed her until she could barely keep up.

When he pulled away, he was flushed and panting, and Tamsin knew she was a sight worse. “Why—?”

“I won’t have you leaving this glen sore.”

Tamsin tilted her head at him, and he grinned a predatory grin that made her glad he was holding her to him. “Not your back, at any rate,” he amended, and took a step, moving Tamsin until the back of her knees hit the grassy ground. She fell backwards onto the bank, saved from a messy topple only by his guiding hand on the small of her back. Solas leaned over her, water dripping from his body to hers as he kissed her collarbone, her sternum, the underside of her breasts. Tamsin stared at him hungrily. The moons were waning but the stars were bright, and the silver light glinted off the water on his skin, drawing glowing lines along the play of muscle across his body. She had known he was strong—he was an excellent warrior, after all—but before they first got each other into bed, she’d had no idea how his lithe grace and simple clothing hid curves and lines of a hard, almost animalistic, strength. Here, though, naked and glistening, shoulders casting shadows over them as he bowed his head to mark the skin of her abdomen, it was breathtakingly apparent. Solas glanced up at her, blue eyes steely and somehow glowing under his brows, and she inhaled.

“ _Fen_ …” she whispered. Solas’s head snapped up.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“Fen,” Tamsin repeated, blinking at him in confusion. “You… in this light, you look like a wolf. Or a lion.”

A hardness in his expression passed, replaced by mild amusement. “A wolf or a lion?”

“Something fierce and strong.” Tamsin disobeyed his earlier command and raised a hand, running it across the planes of his chest. “Something wild.”

A slow smile crept over Solas’s face. “Yes, that,” Tamsin said, pointing at it. “That smile. It looks like you’re about to go hunting.”

“Oh?” Solas asked, voice deep and very amused. “Why would I do that?” Tamsin cocked her head at him in confusion. “I have enough to eat here in front of me.”

She blinked at him, then giggled. Solas raised an eyebrow, part of his dangerous expression dispelled by amusement. “That was kind of terrible,” she teased. “I didn't think you were the type to make bad puns.”

“Hmm, perhaps not.” Solas shrugged. “But it was not a joke.” He swept down and kissed her, stealing her breath and her laugh and replacing them with tongue and lip and heat, until Tamsin was left limp and gasping.

“Come, _ma’haurasha_ ,” he rumbled, “ _Lasa ar’an alas’nira aron fen’en_.” Tamsin had no breath to respond. She could only watch, breathless and burning, as he kissed down her abdomen and finally did something about the deep, wanting ache between her legs.

As soon as his mouth touched her, she moaned. She was a mess, swollen and desperate from his damnable teasing, and when his tongue pressed against her, she fisted her hands in the grass and pushed her head back against the ground. “Fenedhis, Solas,” she swore, trying so damn hard not to squirm. Solas placed a forearm across her hips, pressing her down into the grass to keep her still, and devoured her in just the right ways. Tamsin didn’t know how he had learned so quickly what made her writhe and moan, but learned he had, and in all too short a time she was arching her back, fists tearing grass from the earth, straining against the hand he’d placed over her mouth to muffle her cries as she came.

“Creators,” she gasped once her breath had evened. Solas chuckled, the sound sending jolts through her traitorously hungry body, and pressed kisses to the insides of her thighs. She could feel the slick of her arousal on his lips as he moved his mouth, leaving a rapidly-cooling trail behind. “Solas…”

“Hmm?” He glanced up at her, one eyebrow raised, and she flushed at the sight of him between her legs, his satisfied smirk glistening in the starlight. Whatever she was about to say escaped her and Tamsin dropped her head back down to the grass, groaning.

“That sounded frustrated, vhenan,” he murmured as he drew himself up her body, tongue laving a trail of wet kisses up her abdomen and between her breasts.

“You frustrate me,” she muttered, but despite her tone, her hands were gentle when she curled them around his face and pulled him up for a kiss. She could taste herself in his mouth. “But in good ways.”

“Of course,” he hummed against her lips. He shifted, lowering himself on his elbow to better kiss her, and his arousal slid against her thigh. Lust coiled again in Tamsin’s core and she lifted her hips in a silent invitation. She heard Solas’s breath catch, but he only smirked into the kiss and slid his free hand down between them, thumb tracing a gentle circle around her clit as he slipped two fingers inside of her. Tamsin moaned, both out of pleasure finally having some part of him inside her, and out of frustration because it wasn’t the part she wanted.

“Did you want something, ma’lath?” Solas asked, voice deep and blighted _playful_ as he moved his lips to her neck. Tamsin leaned her head back, grip on his shoulders tightening, and canted her hips to try to encourage him to do something other than trace too-light paths between her legs. Solas ignored the hint.  
Tamsin resisted the urge to swear at him. “Are you waiting for me to beg?”

“I was only looking for a request,” Solas mused. His thumb finally slid over her aching clit, and she moaned, pressed into his hand. “But begging would work as well.” Tamsin waited, breath coming short and sharp, but he didn’t repeat the movement, returning instead to his earlier, entirely unsatisfying, pattern.

“Solas…” she started, but she could barely form the words, much less find within her a sweet and cordial tone to match his, and she had a feeling he would only listen to the politest of requests, just to watch her squirm.

 _Blight it_ , she thought, and would have thumped her head against the grass if Solas wasn’t grazing his teeth down the side of her neck.

“Solas, pl—” she swallowed, tried again. “ _Sithan, garas, aman na’mis_.”

Solas went still. For a moment, Tamsin worried that her clan had remembered the Elvhen wrong. Then he raised his eyes to hers, and her fears vanished, stolen by the dark, burning expression on his face.

“ _‘Ma’lan_ ,” he growled, his voice ragged, and in the next moment his hand was gone from between her legs and he was lifting her hips, fingers slick on her skin as he pressed into her.

He was gentle, mindful of their disparate size, but oh she could feel him shaking from the effort of restraining himself. She closed her eyes, breathed with the stretch of him, and soon their hips were flush.

Solas moved, and Tamsin opened her eyes to see him leaning down over her. The movement made him shift inside her, and she made a sound that started as a gasp of discomfort and ended on a delicious moan. Solas kissed her, and for the first time that night, his kiss was gentle and coaxing, instead of demanding. He was testing her, feeling for any tension that would make things painful. She knew he wouldn’t find any. She kissed him back: _Yes, please yes…_

Solas pulled back and pushed forward again, not so much a thrust as a leisurely slide. Tamsin moaned, tried to rock her hips towards him, but she had no leverage underneath him, and so she could only try to swallow her own pleased noises and reach for him, digging blunted nails into his shoulders. He let her, but when a shallow thrust was met with a scratch down his back that made his rhythm catch, much to her delight, Solas pinned both of Tamsin’s wrists above her head with one hand. The pull in her shoulders made her arch her back. The cold air bit at her exposed breasts, no longer protected by his warm chest, and her hips canted upwards. Now Solas drove deeper into her with each thrust, until Tamsin’s head was spinning and any hope for coherent thought was entirely lost. She gasped and moaned, hampered by her captive hands from clutching at him, bringing him close to her, wrapping her arms around him and muffling the wanton cries he somehow managed to pull from her against his hand, his shoulder, his mouth.

But he would not let her arms go, and so she strained, back arching until her shoulders cried out in an effort to bring him close to her, and he, finally, wonderfully, leaned over and kissed her, taking from her mouth as much as he took from her body. When she came, the cry he wrung from her broke against his lips, and he _blessedly_ kept kissing her, so that when he followed suit a moment later, she felt his shudders against her chest, felt as much as heard the groan that escaped him, hot against her lips.

Solas rested his forehead against hers, eyes closed for a moment as his breathing slowed to something less than a pant. When he _finally_ let go of her wrists, she groaned breathlessly, wincing at the protest in her shoulders as she slipped her arms around him.

“You’re cruel,” she murmured, when she could speak. Solas rolled to the side—slipping out of her in the process, and Tamsin whimpered at the emptiness he left behind—and raised an eyebrow at her.

“Cruel?” he asked, slipping his hand back between her legs. She flushed bright red, her face as hot as their mingled come on her thighs, and bit her lip. Solas paused, palm warm and gentle over swollen, tired flesh, eyeing her expression, then smiled and kissed her gently. His thumb slipped over her clit again, but she twitched away from him, far too sensitive to stand it, so Solas simply left his hand there, heedless of the mess, fingertips tracing idle circles. Tamsin pressed her face to his shoulder, breathing in the electric, musky scent of him—she could never smell the usual citrus and ink after sex—and let her heart slow to a reasonable rate.

“Cruel?” Solas repeated curiously. Tamsin blinked. She’d forgotten that she’d said that.

“I didn’t mean it,” she murmured. “Not really. I just wish I could hold you during, sometimes.”

“Ah. Am I to take it that you didn’t care for being… restrained?” He nearly purred the last word, free hand finding and gently circling her wrist. Tamsin shivered.

“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” she said, and was delighted to hear that her voice sounded lustful instead of breathless. Solas’s fingers twitched around her wrist—evidently he’d heard the same. “I just like holding you. And now my shoulders are sore, too.”

“I see.” Solas lifted his head and kissed the shoulder nearest his lips. “I’ll remedy that,” he promised, but he seemed disinclined to get up, and so Tamsin just nuzzled closer to him.

“Why?” she asked a little while later.

“Why what?”

She twitched her hips, indicating the hand still nestled between her thighs. “I don’t think I have anything more in me—that is _not_ a challenge—but your hand’s still here. Why?” Her tone was mild; she didn’t mind, and she hoped he could hear that. She was just curious.

“Because,” Solas murmured, lips on her cheek, “you are warm and soft.”

“That’s it?”

“Do I need another reason?”

Tamsin giggled despite herself. “No, I guess not.” A slight breeze hit the sweat cooling on her skin, and she shivered.

“Come.” Solas pulled away and stood, offering her a hand to help her up. She took it as a courtesy, and then quickly discovered that she did need his help; her knees were quivering. Solas steadied her with a low chuckle, and when she grumbled at him, he pulled her close and kissed her forehead. “Come, ‘ma vhenan. It’s growing late, and we both need to bathe.” He flicked a hand at the water, sending a puff of red magic over the pond’s surface, and stepped in. Tamsin discovered when she joined him that he had heated the water, and she sank into its warmth with a sigh of delight. Solas made good on his earlier promise and gently rubbed the sore muscles in her shoulders. He also, to her slight embarrassment and greater affection, helped her wash, though she had a feeling the gesture was also an excuse to fondle her breasts and hips. She said as much, and was met only with a sly smile and a kiss, so she abused the same excuse to run doting hands over the smooth planes of his chest and back, and grab a palmful of his arse before he fixed her with a frown.

They dressed and wandered back to camp together, Solas leaning on his staff and Tamsin leaning on Solas. Bull was asleep, judging by the great shadow of his bedroll, but Cole was still awake, sitting by the low fire and gazing out into the forest. He turned when they approached, and tilted his head with curiosity.

“She doesn’t bother you anymore.”

“Hmm?” Tamsin glanced up. She had been distracted by the way her pace and Solas’s matched, and had been watching their feet.

“Your sister. You still mourn her, but she doesn’t haunt you. The woods are sweet for you, now.”

“True.” Tamsin leaned over and kissed the top of Cole’s head through the crown of his hat, then made her way to her bedroll.

“Can people do that? Just stop hurting on their own like that?”

“It’s not that it doesn’t hurt, Cole.” Tamsin slipped under her blanket. Solas moved in the corner of her eye, and she turned her head to see him moving his own bedroll to next to hers. He glanced at her, and smiled.

“What is it, then?”

“Better things balance out the hurt.” Tamsin turned to look across the fire at Cole. “If people make lots of memories in a place, the place becomes about all of the feelings, instead of just the worst or best ones.”

“Oh. … I have first watch. Bull has second.”

“Okay. Tell him to wake me after his watch?”

“Okay.”

Tamsin drew her blanket up over her shoulder and glanced up as Solas settled into his own bedroll. It was a little strange to see him getting ready for bed; when they were out in the field he usually took first watch, or stayed up later than the others to wander the surrounding area. Tamsin could count on her hands the number of times she’d seen him sleeping, and a fair number of those had been in the last four weeks… if falling asleep next to him, exhausted and sated after sex counted as seeing him sleeping.

Solas folded his heavy furred vest under his head, and then met Tamsin’s gaze. “Sleep, Inquisitor,” he said, and Tamsin wondered if she had ever heard anyone say her title with so much affection. “You need it.”

“Only if you do the same. You need it as well.” _Especially after that performance_. Her eyes shone with the unspoken words, and by the quirk at the corner of Solas’s mouth, he understood.

“You’re saying things but not saying them. Why?”

Tamsin rolled her eyes and pressed her face into the blanket. “You’re supposed to be watching our surroundings, not us, Cole.”

“I’m not watching. I just heard.” His voice was petulant. “I can’t help it.”

“We know, Cole,” Solas called soothingly. “I will explain it another time.”

“Okay.”

Tamsin made a face at Solas. He simply smiled, lifted himself up on his elbow and leaned over the respectable space between their bedrolls to kiss her softly and silently.

“Good night, Inquisitor,” he said, and then, very quietly, “Sweet dreams, ‘ma’sa’lath.”

“Is that a promise?” she whispered back. Solas paused—he evidently had not considered that—and then smiled a smile that had just the slightest darkness of a predator at the edges.

“Yes, it is,” he murmured. Tamsin immediately squirreled down into her bedroll and closed her eyes. Solas chuckled, and his own blankets rustled as he settled himself to sleep and make good on his word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'ma'lath: my love  
> 'ma'sa'lath: my one love  
> Ir abelas: I'm sorry.  
> Irel abelas: I'm so sorry.  
> 'ma'av'in: A very personal and slightly sexual endearment. Lit. 'my mouth', in both the "you could speak for me" and "I taste like you" sense.  
> ma’haurasha: A very sexual endearment. lit. 'my honey', but 'honey' is a very loaded euphemism in Elvhen.  
> Lasa ar’an alas’nira aron fen’en: 'let us dance as the wolves do'. Solas is basically saying "let me make love to you", while making a wolf pun at the same time.  
> Sithan, garas, aman na’mis: Please fuck me.  
> ‘Ma’lan: lit. my female self, but here I'm using it as a pretty way of saying "you are mine" with less possessive connotations.


End file.
